*thump*. That is the sound of Google Chrome Frame getting a beta tag on it with a new version that comes up to Chrome 5 levels:

Instead of adding new bells and whistles, we’ve fixed more than 200 bugs to make integration with Internet Explorer seamless while improving security, stability, and performance. For example, we’ve improved our handling of Internet Explorer’s InPrivate browsing, cache clearing, and cookie blocking. All of the enhancements and features of Google Chrome 5.0 are available in Google Chrome Frame too, including HTML5 audio and video, canvas, geolocation, workers, and databases.

As we’ve worked on these improvements, we’ve been excited to see sites adopting Google Chrome Frame, including Meebo and all the blogs hosted by WordPress. In addition to our launch partner Google Wave, some other Google properties, including Orkut and YouTube are also relying on Google Chrome Frame to deliver HTML5 experiences to millions of users.

For those of you who want to develop HTML5 applications and deploy them broadly, we encourage you to give Google Chrome Frame a try. Existing users will be auto-updated to the beta, so if you downloaded Google Chrome Frame before, you’ll automatically get the new version. We’re also creating a new dev channel release, where you can try out the cutting-edge features we’re developing. For information on getting started with Google Chrome Frame, our project documentation is the place to start.

Alex gave a talk on how you can sprinkle in the Chrome Frame love, and start using the HTML5 goodness of video, svg, canvas, etc today!

In some ways it’s a strange product; it’s working best when you notice it least. As a developer, you shouldn’t have to think much harder about it than either to include the header or meta tag or to include a couple of lines of script to prompt users to install the plugin — a process which notably doesn’t require a restart and doesn’t even take users off of your site. There’s no new tool to learn, no new language you have to wrap your head around…in fact, the hardest part might just be putting down all the habits we’ve collected for catering to legacy browsers.

As I’ve begun to build exclusively to modern browsers, the experience of concerted un-learning of hacks and the ability to write directly to the platform again, sans toolkit, has been eye opening. Yes, there’s still a lot that can be improved in DOM, CSS, and HTML, but things are moving, and the tools we need now aren’t the tools we have today. Better yet, there’s every indication that things are progressing fast enough that instead of building tools to bring up the rear, we’ll be building them to shield ourselves from the ferocious pace of improvement should we need them at all.

If you’re starting a new project today, I encourage you to prototype to HTML5 and modern features and then think hard about what you’re building and for whom. Do these apps really need to run on legacy browsers? Why not just use GCF to make that pain and expense go away. Once you’ve experienced how good modern web development can be — how rich and fast the apps you can deliver are — I’m convinced that you’ll find it hard to go back. The rich, open, interoperable web is the platform of the future, and I couldn’t be happier that GCF is going to help deliver that future.

Great stuff. I’m working on an application for work with a small user base where we could quite easily justify requiring Chrome Frame for IE.

Til now I’ve been very IE aware, just avoided rounded corners and things like ‘pretty tooltips’ that used canvas/svg/css3 because I didn’t like the IE fallbacks, but I may just make the switch to Chrome Frame and start using that stuff NOW.

@Tuurlijk: Here is a crude bookmarklet I use to fix the width in Ajaxian (after page load): Bookmarklet